European Council on Foreign Relations
Founded in 2007, the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) is a think-tank trying to copy its hugely influential US counterpart, the Council on Foreign Relations. The ECFR has a significant crossover with the Institute for Statecraft and the Integrity Initiative.
ECFR has offices in Berlin, London, Madrid, Paris, Rome, Warsaw and Sofia, with Berlin serving as headquarter. Being funded by and working on behalf of corporate interests, the think-tank looks for "threats" and pushes corporate-friendly policies like increased military budgets.
Origins
ECFR was founded in 2007 by Mark Leonard together with a council of fifty founding members, chaired by Martti Ahtisaari, Joschka Fischer, and Mabel van Oranje.
Funding
The ECFR is a private organization that relies on donations from big corporations and foundations close to billionaires, plus some funding from Western governments. It was originally established with the support of Open Society Foundations, Communitas Foundation and the Spanish FRIDE.
About half of ECFR's funding comes from such foundations, one third from governments and the rest from corporations and rich individuals. Open Society Foundations is the main donor to ECFR, funding with its grants one third (£2,345,566 in 2017) of ECFR's total income (£7,278,122 in 2017). Other donors include major organizations mainly from Europe and the Western world such as the foundation Stiftung Mercator (Germany) (£710,753 or ~10% total funding in 2017), European and the Japanese governments, NATO, leading corporations such as Daimler AG and Microsoft as well as rich individuals.
Members
ECFR's community includes serving foreign ministers, former prime ministers, members of national parliaments and the European Parliament, EU Commissioners, former NATO secretaries generals, business leaders and system-friendly thinkers and journalists. The Council gathers once a year as a full body for the Annual Council Meeting, hosted in a different European capital each year.
A document from the 4th Integrity Initiative Leak revealed that two members of the European Council on Foreign Relations were also members of the Integrity Initiative's Spanish Cluster: Borja Lasheras & Nika Prislan. Nacho Torreblanco, also an II member was director of the ECFR Office in Madrid. Kadri Liik is also a member of the IfS UK inner core.
Events Sponsored
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Open Society Foundations |
Rockefeller Brothers Fund |